Related category
The Guns of August
Barbara W. Tuchman reconstructs the opening of the First World War, moving from the assumptions and military plans formed before 1914 to the German advance through Belgium and France, the Allied retreat, and the Battle of the Marne. Her central concern is not simply who won or lost particular engagements. She examines how rigid timetables, institutional habits, personal rivalries, faulty intelligence, nationalism, and misplaced confidence narrowed the choices available to political and military leaders. The result is a closely observed account of strategy colliding with reality. Although concentrated chiefly on Europe’s western theater, the book also considers Russia’s invasion of East Prussia and the resulting pressures on German planning. Published in 1962, it became an influential work of narrative history and received the 1963 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. Its vivid storytelling remains compelling, while its interpretations are best read alongside later scholarship on the…